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Wadi Al-Hitan, the Place of Whales in Egypt

The deserts of The red sea contains some of the best maintained paleontological sites on the world one of which is Wadi al-Hitan or the Place of whales. This distant valley in the Western Desert, some 150 km southern west of Cairo, contains useful selection of past and bone fragments of a now extinct, suborder of whales, known as the archaeoceti. These past describes one of the biggest secrets of the progress of whales: the appearance of the whale as an ocean-going mammal from a past lifestyle as a land-based creature.

Wadi Al-Hitan is the most important website on the globe for the business presentation of this level of progress. It shows strongly the type and lifestyle of these whales during their transition. No other globe results in the number, focus and quality of such fossils, as is their availability and establishing in an eye-catching and protected landscape.

The fossils of Wadi Al-Hitan way back to 50 million decades show the newest archaeocetes, in the last levels of progress from area creatures to a underwater lifestyle. They already show the common structured body way of recent whales, while maintaining certain basic factors of skull and tooth structure, as well as hind legs.

Many of the whale skeletons are in good as they have been well maintained in the stone structures. Semi-complete pumpkin heads or scarecrows are discovered in the valley and in some situations, even material of the abdomen are maintained. Fossil of other beginning creatures such as those of sharks, crocodiles, sawfish, turtles and radiation discovered at Wadi al-Hitan makes it possible to restore the nearby ecological and ecological conditions of the time.

There is significant proof which indicates that the basin of Wadi Hitan was engrossed in water some 40 to 50 million years ago. In those days, the so-called Tethys Sea achieved far southern of the current Mediterranean sea. The Tethys Sea is believed to have retreated northern and over the decades placed dense sediments of sandstone and limestone noticeable in stone structures in Wadi Hitan.

Geological research have been performed in the region since the 1800's, and the first skeletons were discovered around 1830 but were never gathered due to the difficult availability to the site at that period.

At first, it was thought to be a huge marine reptile. It was only later in 1902, that the varieties were recognized as whales. For the next 80 decades they drawn relatively little attention, mostly due to the problems of attaining the region. In the 1980's attention in the website started again as four wheel drive automobiles became more easily obtainable.

Wadi Al-Hitan, now a Unesco World Heritage site, is frequented by only 1,000 people each year.

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